Trading Articles #3

Strongest Dad in the World by Rick Reilly for Sports Illustrated.

September 23, 2009

The author of this article, Rick Reilly, seems to think that all he provides for his own children will never measure up to the amount of devotion Dick Hoyt pours into his disabled son. From the very beginning of the article, Reilly speaks very informally to his audience, joking with them about how his paying for his sons' text messaging or taking them to Sports Illustrated Swim Suit shoots makes him an above-average father. He then, very brusquely, tells his audience that, besides his awesome capability to provide his children with these worldly luxuries through his 'connections', compared to Dick Hoyt, he 'sucks'. This is how you know you're reading an article aimed for an audience of teenage boys and adult men with minds of teenage boys. The awful use of sarcasm-- "And what has Rick done for his father? Not much-- except save his life."-- are so blatantly obvious and elementary they could be coming out of the fingers of an adolescent. I doubt that the doctor set aside the disabled son's family and told them "He'll be a vegetable he rest of his life." Such writing is striving for high ratings and low brows. Any writer who uses the word "porker" to describe a man's physique is not writing a legitimate article, but rather, a blog post!